It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 02, 2022
Tesla recalls nearly a half a million vehicles over safety issues
Tesla is recalling nearly half a million Model 3 and Model S vehicles in the U.S. over safety issues related to the rearview camera and the trunk.
Specifically, 356,309 Tesla Model 3 electric cars (model years 2017 through 2020/production dates July 15, 2017 through September 30, 2020) have been recalled over a problem with the trunk harness coaxial cable that could wear away and cut the feed from the rearview camera to the center display.
“Over time, repeated opening and closing of the trunk lid may cause excessive wear to the coaxial cable,” a document posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says, adding that if the wear causes the core of the coaxial cable to separate, the rearview camera feed to the vehicle’s center display will stop working, increasing the risk of a collision.
The other recall affects 119,009 Tesla Model S vehicles (model years 2014 through 2021/production dates September 16, 2014 through December 23, 2020) and involves a situation where a misalignment error with the latch assembly in the frunk (front trunk) could cause the hood to pop open without warning, obscuring the driver’s view and increasing the chances of a crash.
According to the NHTSA’s documents, Tesla is not aware of any major incidents related to either of the issues.
Owners of affected vehicles can take their Tesla to a dealer for a free repair. If anyone has already paid to fix the listed issues, Tesla will reimburse the owner for the cost of the work.
The notices were filed on December 21, though they have only just received media attention.
Earlier this year, Tesla called in around 135,000 Model S and Model X vehicles to fix an issue that put the touchscreen at risk of failure, resulting in the loss of the rearview/backup camera feed and other safety-related features.
9600 BAUD
Just the fax: Canadian health-care is still stuck in the ’80s
It’s a dark and rainy Thursday night towards the end of 2021, but for Steven Marji it might as well be 1991.
He’s on his way back from a repair job, fixing a vital piece of technology his customer simply can’t live without: the fax machine.
This time, the patron was an 85-year-old half-retired real estate agent. But even though printers and copiers make up the bulk of his business, Marji discovers that there’s one industry, aside from retirees, where he can always find them.
“I’m a little surprised the medical field they still rely on it,” he told the Star as he drove home from his most recent job.
“It keeps us going.”
While most offices ditched their fax machines long ago — the provincial government plans to phase out traditional public service fax machines by the end of the year — they remain a persistent fixture in hospitals, pharmacies and doctors across the country. .
Many doctors have newer digital models that integrate faxes into a printer or scanner, but the frustrations persist amid calls to usher the industry into the 21st century, and move beyond an archaic system that exposed the pandemic’s worst.
As a result of these pitfalls, the agency has implemented a new case and contact management system, reducing its reliance on faxes.
There were other high-profile examples from around the world, the BBC reported that in Austin, Texas, the testing system was quickly overwhelmed in June 2021, in part because of the need to fax the results. Health officials in the Netherlands faced a similar problem.
But despite some improvements made during the pandemic, the fax remains a critical step in the transfer of patient information in healthcare.
in a October Report, The Ontario Medical Association, which represents doctors in the province, reported that nine out of 10 doctors have to rely on faxes to share patient information. Thirty percent of the doctors they surveyed said linking healthcare record systems to reduce reliance on faxes would save them about one to five hours a week.
‘You know that sound of a dial-up modem? That’s really what’s going on in the back of my mind as we go through and click through,” said Dr Miriam Hanna, a pediatric allergist in Burlington.
All of her patients require a referral to get to her, and about “99 percent” of them come by fax, she said. They are part of “every day, and every encounter is linked in some way to using a fax machine.”
This means that information “can be easily lost”. Sometimes the fax does not come through or goes to the wrong number. They can also be blurry, or employees just get a blank page.
“It’s archaic, but that’s what we do,” she said.
“Doctors use faxing forever, for better or for worse.”
dr. Rashaad Bhyat, a primary care physician in Brampton who works part-time at Canada Health Infoway, a federally funded nonprofit that promotes digital health solutions, said stories of fax confusion, like that of the pandemic, are just the “tip of the iceberg.” In his office, he uses electronic health records, but the system still ends up in faxes, as they have to fax documents to other offices, hospitals, and pharmacies.
“Fax is very unreliable, very insecure as a technology and it is very difficult to eradicate,” Bhyat said.
“We often have what we call fax tags, going back and forth between our office and specialist offices, or our office and hospitals.”
Information “ends up in a barrage of back and forth faxing, which ends up taking a day or two to sort out.” He likens faxing to “throwing something in the airwaves, it’s a black box.” This often results in “significant delay” that can affect people receiving their medications and “causes a lot of discomfort for patients and a lot of stress for everyone involved.”
Of course, the fax was not always a symbol of outdated technology. It took decades for them to figure it out — Scottish scientist Alexander Bain is credited with inventing the first early fax machine in the 1840s — but by the late 20th century, “what’s your fax number?” was the question at every business meeting.
“The machine converts the text or images into a dotted pattern and sends out signals. Somewhere on the other side of a phone line, another fax machine receives the signals and translates them back into the correct dot pattern, star journalist Alison Cunliffe wrote in a July 1988 article.
“Science fiction.”
She mused that they became so popular that they could one day be in every living room, next to the ‘computer and video cassette recorder’.
And if your friends needed directions to your house? No problem, “just fax your guests a map”.
Needless to say, the fax didn’t live up to the hype.
So why are they still so ubiquitous in healthcare?
“It’s inertia,” said Sachin Aggarwal, the CEO of healthcare technology company Think Research.
“This is something for everyone to tackle. It has to come from the top down, there has to be some mandates, but the technology already exists.”
Michael Green, the president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway, said there needs to be a “joint effort” between health authorities, ministries of health and health professionals to make the change.
“The thing with health care, it’s a pretty conservative field and I think it takes a while to change practices,” he said.
Some of this can be done through laws, or a combination of carrots and sticks. But it’s complicated by the fact that in Ontario, most doctors are independent contractors, billing the government for services rather than receiving salaries.
The approximately 1,300 traditional fax lines in the Ontario Public Service are spread “across all ministries,” Kyle Richardson, manager of issues, media and correspondence for the Ontario Treasury Board Secretariat, said in an email. “More than 90 percent of that will be eliminated or migrated to digital alternatives.”
The healthcare sector includes other agencies and organizations that are not eligible for this modernization project, he added.
An extreme idea is simply to ban faxing, making it illegal to fax health information, Green said. Incentives can also be given to doctors to make investments to replace them.
“There is still a way to go, unfortunately,” he said.
Meanwhile, the occasional fax repairman Marji sits back in his car philosophically. Over a decades-long career, he has seen various technologies come in and out of fashion.
But somehow they have a way of never really disappearing. In addition to faxing, he also does some repairs to his passion, typewriters.
“They said the typewriters would be outdated, but it never really happened,” he said.
“Twenty to thirty years from now you will still see people using the fax… it will always be there.”
Cities uniting against Bill 21 is a notable feature
A remarkable thing happened at the Toronto City Council meeting in December – in a unanimous vote (with only one absent member), the council confirmed Toronto’s opposition to Quebec’s Law 21, which bans Canadian public employees such as teachers, police officers and lawyers from wearing religious symbols. hijabs, crosses, turbans and yarmulkes.
In addition, the council committed $ 100,000 in financial support to the legal challenge from Bill 21 led by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the World Sikh Organization and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA).
The city council is a group of elected officials who sometimes have bitter disagreements over whether an individual tree should be felled in a city of three million people, so the lack of objections to supporting the challenge is truly remarkable.
And while the hundreds of thousands are a drop in the bucket compared to Toronto’s overall budget, even the cheap skaters in the council voted for it, and they have sometimes objected to even smaller amounts being spent on other areas.
It was a moment of moral clarity that should be noted and praised. City councils often make proclamations on various topics over which they have no direct control, but this definitive moral stance also spreads across the country.
Just before the holiday, Calgary City Council discussed support for the legal challenge, and many city council members gave passionate speeches about why Bill 21 is wrong, ultimately committing Calgary to non-financial support for the case. Similarly, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown has called on “100” cities across the country to support the legal challenge, and other cities, such as Markham, have or are taking up the case.
This action at the municipal level stands in stark contrast to the federal government’s lack of it, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken a hands-free approach to Bill 21. Being critical of Quebec on such issues is a third trajectory of Canadian politics. Remember the grief that Shachi Kurl, moderator of the English debate during the federal election, got back in September when she simply asked the party leaders about Bill 21.
Avoiding the subject is then understandable, but it is also cowardly given the effort, and how directly it undermines not only the freedoms we have as Canadians, but also our much-celebrated multiculturalism, something that is often taken up as something to be done. be proud of. What to do with it all, when in a crunch it is not defended by people at the top? However, Canadian cities, the level of government that is given the least respect, take the lead here.
With the challenge of Bill 21, there are nuances of 2015, when the federal Conservative government planned a niqab ban, and the loudest opposition came from mayors like Naheed Nenshi in Calgary and Don Iveson in Edmonton.
Municipal politicians are closest to the people they represent, without the distance, both physical and legislative, that provincial and federal representatives have, so it is logical that they defend individual freedom in this way. Cities should be deadlines and beacons of freedom, and bill 21 damages, in the words of the CCLA, especially immigrants and racist communities.
Some critics of the city-led challenge to Bill 21 have said it will have unintended effects such as making Quebecers feel attacked, but it is a very status quo, federal form of framing, the same that allows or forces, the Prime Minister to sit this out.
Mayor John Tory, for his part, has focused on the national implications of Bill 21 and the need to fight for the values outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is the right position to take.
Cities have often taken the lead when other levels of government have stalled, especially in terms of human and civil rights, and even in public health. A decade and a half ago, before same-sex marriage was formalized by federal law, Toronto City Hall performed same-sex ceremonies in response to the wishes and demands of the Toronto people.
Two decades earlier, when HIV / AIDS was spreading rapidly and national governments were shaking, cities and their public health departments were on the streets. Recently, many Canadian cities have also been positive about climate policy.
While it’s easy to take symbolic positions and $ 100,000 is ultimately not that much money, I wonder if the uplifting fight against Bill 21 could have some other unintended effects, such as showing cities across the country what they can do. or can try to do when they stand together behind a common cause.
Up to 80 percent of Canadians live in urban areas, but urban issues often receive little attention at the federal level, and provincial governments are largely content to maintain significant control over municipal affairs. The united voice with which cities speak out against Bill 21 could be the start of a long-awaited urban movement in Canada.
Edmonton’s Al Rashid Mosque extends temporary shelter as extreme cold remains
By Chris Chacon Global News Posted January 1, 2022 After a week of extremely cold temperatures, Edmontonians can finally expect some warmer conditions over the next few days. But this brief reprieve isn't expected to last, leading some local shelters to extend their services. Chris Chacon reports.
Volunteers at the temporary shelter at Edmonton’s Al Rashid Mosque have been busy ringing in the new year by helping others.
“We have about 10 individuals staying at the mosque here with us during the day, the team is putting together a nice brunch for them to help them kick off the new year with a little bit of positivity and hope,” said Noor Al-Henedy, director of communications.
The mosque is one of several shelters that opened when the city activated its extreme weather response last month.
The shelter was supposed to end its services Dec. 31, the same time the city was also expected to end its extreme weather response — but both have been extended.
“Initially, everyone was expecting the temperatures to remain low until Dec. 31, but if anybody is checking the weather forecast the temperatures are not rising. They are remaining very low,” Al-Henedy said.
“Certainly the duration feels long and perhaps it is, in the sense that it happened over the Christmas season and generally people like to be outdoors doing activities with family and friends,” Environment Canada Meteorologist Heather Pimiskern said.
And while this stretch of extreme cold weather is not unusual for Edmonton, Pimiskern said we are in for a brief weekend warm up.
“But unfortunately it will be short lived as another artic air blast is expected to surge southward into Alberta and remain entrenched over the region over the next week,” Pimiskern said.
Because of the cold, weather the mosque said it will ensure to keep its shelter open.
“We have a lot of guests here with their feet full of frostbite, they can’t move their hands, they can’t even feel their hands, they’re in crucial pain and they have nowhere to go,” Al-Henedy said.
Pimiskern said our region could be in for more of this extreme cold weather over the next few months.
For now, the mosque’s shelter is planning to stay open until at least Jan. 9.
“We felt it was very important to keep this space open, we do not want anyone to be sleeping outside when it’s minus 30 or minus 40,” Al-Henedy said. Al-Henedy said the shelter is in need of disposable blankets, pillows, cleaning supplies, bus tickets, snacks, and volunteers.
ALBERTA
TransAlta completes conversion from coal to natural gas power in Canada
CALGARY – A major Canadian electricity producer is successfully off coal power in this country, nine years ahead of a government deadline.
Calgary-based Trans-Alta Corp. announced Wednesday it has finished its planned transition from coal to natural gas in its Canadian power generation.
The company said the recently completed conversion of the Keephills Unit 3 power plant west of Edmonton was the last of three coal-to-gas conversions at its Alberta thermal power generation facilities.29dk2902l
In a news release, TransAlta president and chief executive John Kousinioris said the company has achieved a significant milestone well ahead of the federal mandate that will require the full phaseout of coal-fired electricity generation in Canada by 2030.
“We are pleased to have completed this important step, nine years ahead of the government target,” Kousinioris said. “Our coal transition is among the most meaningful carbon emissions reduction achievements in Canadian history.”
Since 2019, TransAlta says it has invested $295 million into its coal-to-gas program, which also included the conversion of Sundance Unit 6 and Keephills Unit 2 near Wabuman, Alta., and Sheerness Units 1 and 2 near Hanna, Alta., plus the construction of new high-volume gas delivery infrastructure.
Converting to natural gas from coal maintains the company’s current generation capacity while at the same time reducing carbon dioxide emissions by almost 50 per cent, the company said.
As of Friday, TransAlta will also close its Highvale thermal coal mine, which is the largest in Canada and has been in operation on the south shore of Wabamun Lake west of Edmonton, since 1970.
TransAlta’s move away from coal is a major milestone in Alberta, which has been working to reduce its reliance on coal for power generation.
In 2014, 55 per cent of Alberta’s electricity was produced from coal. The province, under then-premier Rachel Notley, announced in 2015 — three years ahead of the federal government’s own coal mandate — that it would eliminate emissions from coal-powered generation by 2030.
In addition to TransAlta, other Alberta-based companies have also made major utility conversion commitments. Edmonton-based Capital Power Corp. has said it will spend nearly $1 billion to switch two coal-fired power units west of Edmonton to natural gas, and will stop using coal entirely by 2023.
TransAlta said that overall, it has retired 3,794 megawatts of coal-fired generation since 2018. The company still operates the Centralia coal-fired power plant in Washington State, which is set to shut down at the end of 2025.
TransAlta said that it is on track to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent, or 19.7 million tonnes, by 2030 over 2015 levels and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Calgary·Opinion
Alberta steps closer to ending coal power, faster than many expected. But then comes the hard part
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Blake Shaffer on how to get to zero emissions from power
TransAlta has finished converting the last of its three coal power generating plants to natural gas, a transition at the Keephills plant west of Edmonton. The Calgary-based company says the switch cuts almost in half the emissions intensity of the power at the Keephills unit. (Sam Martin/CBC)
This opinion piece is by Dr. Blake Shaffer, an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the University of Calgary. He was formerly the head trader for western power and gas at TransAlta.
Another year, another step closer to the end of coal power in Alberta.
As we turn our calendars to 2022, only three coal-fired power plants will remain in Alberta. With TransAlta's Keephills 1 coal power plant shuttering Dec. 31, and Keephills 3 and Sundance 4 switching from burning coal to natural gas, the Genesee 1, 2, and 3 facilities at Warburg are now the last of what was, only a few years ago, Alberta's most-used source of electricity.
The end of coal power in Alberta is happening faster than many expected, and well ahead of regulations set first by Ottawa in 2012 and updated in Alberta in 2015. Only a decade after Alberta commissioned its last coal plant, the regulatory phase-out scheduled for 2030 is a moot point, with the remaining Genesee plants set to convert to natural gas by the end of 2023. Coal, once responsible for over 80 per cent of Alberta's electric generation, and roughly half only five years ago, will be gone.
This chart shows coal power's share of Alberta's annual electricity demand, as it shrinks over the years from a high of 81 per cent in 2001 to 20 per cent in 2021 and an expected zero per cent by 2023. (Blake Shaffer)
This will be the biggest greenhouse gas reduction in Alberta's history. A true climate success story. But we're not done yet. Converting to natural gas was the easy part. The road ahead to meet the federal government's goal of eliminating all emissions from the power sector by 2035 will be the hard part.
Our recent cold snap, with temperatures plunging to –30, and lower, across the province offers a glimpse of the challenge ahead. While renewables now account for one quarter of Alberta's generating capacity(that alone is a pretty amazing stat), they produced less than five per cent of the energy during the cold days at the end of 2021. A dearth of wind coinciding with the coldest conditions, something unfortunately all too common for Alberta wind in winter, meant the lion's share of Alberta's power came from natural gas.
This line graph shows how wind power generation in Alberta dropped during a cold snap in late December. A dearth of wind coinciding with the coldest conditions, something all too common for Alberta wind in winter, meant the lion's share of the province's power came from natural gas. (Blake Shaffer)
This isn't intended as a knock on renewables. It's simply a reminder that they are what they are, and that is raw, or intermittent, energy. And that's OK so long as that's what we expect and what we're paying for. When wind and solar were expensive, as in Ontario a decade ago, people had a reason to question their merit. But now that they're cheap — and they really are cheap — it can be worth accepting their intermittency. (As I like to tell my electricity students, even I will drink cheap red wine sometimes, so long as it's cheap!)
The key is knowing what to expect, being honest about what they provide (and paying accordingly), and finding ways to integrate these abundant and cheap resources into our power mix using other flexible, or "firm," resources. Renewables can and likely will produce the bulk of Alberta's electric energy in the future, but other resources will be needed to couple with them to ensure reliable capacity, or "on-demand" availability.
Firming up Alberta's power supply
With that in mind, how can Alberta get to zero while keeping the lights on (and costs down)?
First, we need to better engage demand. While not for everyone, encouraging those with some flexibility (hello, EV chargers!) to shift when they pull from the grid can limit the strain on the system. More supply variability from renewables, and cheaper automated ways to flexibly control demand, make this an increasingly valuable and feasible low-cost option. Regulators and electricity providers need to innovate to encourage this type of behaviour.
Second, while unabated natural gas has a limited role in a zero emission future, natural gas plants equipped with carbon capture offer a way to take advantage of Alberta's plentiful natural gas reserves. Capital Power is planning to go down this route with their Genesee facility. Another option is to convert these plants to clean-burninghydrogen. As hydrogen production gets cheaper, this starts to become an attractive option. "Green" hydrogen, produced through electrolysis, also offers a way to store hydrogen by soaking up periods of excess wind and solar power.
While unabated natural gas has a limited role in a zero emission future, natural gas plants equipped with carbon capture offer a way to take advantage of Alberta's plentiful natural gas reserves, Blake Shaffer writes. Capital Power is planning to go down this route with their Genesee Generation Station, located 70 kilometres southwest of Edmonton. (Supplied by Capital Power)
Third, nuclear reactors, of the small modular variety, are a potential game-changer. Though they have to clear some pretty steep technical and economic hurdles to be viable, it's worth remembering that wind and solar were also once deemed infeasibly expensive 10 years ago, until they weren't. 2035, however, is a tight deadline for nuclear to get its technical, economic, and regulatory ducks in a row. Geothermal is another firm supply option, one similarly plagued with cost questions, but also one that can leverage the oil and gas skill set in this province.
Fourth, storage offers a way to take advantage of Alberta's abundance of cheap wind and solar, shifting the energy from periods of plenty to when it's needed. Batteries can offer short duration storage, while pumped hydro and evencompressed air can offer longer duration opportunities. As renewables get cheaper, storage becomes increasingly attractive. And believe me, Alberta will be building a lot more renewables in the years to come.
Fifth,bigger transmission connections between Alberta and B.C. ought to be part of the mix. Comparative advantages exist on both sides of the border (B.C. has the peaking capacity; Alberta has the cheap variable energy). Rather than one-way flow like pipelines, transmission lines mean exporting when the wind is fierce, and importing hydro power when it's not. This exchange won't come free, but it's cheaper than many of the alternatives.
So what's needed to make these resources a reality?
For starters, those saying "it can't be done" need to be reminded that many also said phasing out coal by 2030, let alone 2023, wouldn't be possible, that coal-to-gas conversions were hard, and that wind would never be procured for less than $80 per megawatt-hour, let alone the mid-$30s observed recently.
Nonetheless, some clarity on where we are headed is needed. Uncertainty is anathema for investors. If Alberta is truly headed for zero emission power by 2035, planning and investment needs to start now. To the extent governments cande-risk policy uncertainty by providing clear and durable guidance on future carbon prices and emissions regulations, this will better enable the new resources that are needed to be built.
Also, and perhaps a topic for a deep dive on another day, Alberta's market design may have to evolve to ensure reliability as we transition. We went down this road five years ago, with Alberta's system operator recommending, and the NDP accepting, the introduction of a capacity market — essentially paying for steel in ground, i.e., the ability to produce, not just energy generated. This was rescinded in 2019 under the UCP, but the need for some form of instrument to ensure sufficient resources in the longer run never went away.
To date, Alberta's short run energy market has attracted sufficient long run investment. Will that be the case as we transition? And, importantly, what will prices do along the way? Texas, whose power market is the closest thing in North America to Alberta's, is grappling with this same question in the aftermath of brutal power outages last February. They, too, are currently considering enhancing their market with some form of reliability mechanism. Alberta ought to take note and take this issue on proactively.
What are we the consumers to do?
Finally, what does this mean for you and I?
Those that follow me on Twitter won't be surprised to hear me say: get on a fixed rate plan. While the market will be volatile, there's no reason those bumps need to flow through to consumers' pocketbooks. There remain five-year fixed rate plans today that are well below where the market is currently indicating prices will be over that period. And if things change, most of these plans give you the flexibility to exit. I've done it, and I'd encourage others to consider it as well.
Installing solar panels is one way consumers can insulate themselves against rising power prices, Blake Shaffer writes. Here, solar panels can be seen on the roofs at the Prairie Sky Cohousing Co-operative in northeast Calgary, which has got all its energy from solar since 2020. (Submitted by Lise Rajewicz)
Another option to consider to protect yourself against rising prices is to add solar panels. It won't take you off the grid — you'll still be paying those pesky fixed charges, and for power when you're using more than you generate — but the amount you produce will reduce your exposure to energy prices, even allowing you to receive a credit when you're surplus. What was once a luxury for the ultra-green or techno-curious is now in the realm of economically reasonable with panel costs falling and the federal government handing out $5,000 retrofit cheques. And with the cities of Calgary and Edmonton now offering low-cost financing by spreading the cost over many years on your property tax bill, it's more accessible to more people.
The bottom line is that Alberta's power system is changing. And though the emissions reductions are a good thing, with change will come some turbulence. Getting to zero by 2035 will be no easy feat with many bumps in the road. It's time to ensure our markets, policies, and plans are ready to get us there.
Blake Shaffer is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the University of Calgary. Prior to academia, he had a 15-year career in energy trading.
Doctors say breathing toxic air in Delhi is like smoking 10 cigarettes a day and urgent solutions are needed
By Charmaine Manuel
abc.net.au
1/1/2022
During December, Delhi's daily PM2.5 levels were, on average, nearly 14 times higher than the World Health Organization recommends.
(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
Months after the Delta variant ravaged India's capital, Delhi, the city's residents are taking refuge indoors once more. Key points:
Air pollution is a health concern for children and adults in Delhi
Experts say breathing toxic air is equivalent to smoking multiple cigarettes a day
Clean air activists say urgent solutions are needed
But this time, they aren't just shielding themselves from a dangerous virus. They're also protecting themselves from the city's toxic air.
Schools, construction sites and some workplaces were closed briefly in November due to heavy air pollution and the country's chief justice has asked the central government to take urgent action on the "very serious" problem in Delhi.
Delhi's air quality has been steadily deteriorating for years, and it is particularly bad during winter when the cool weather traps pollution and smoke, shrouding the city in a thick layer of smog.
This seasonal phenomenon has huge health costs for Delhi's residents, many of whom are now agitating for change. No one knows what 'real blue skies' and 'real clean air' feels like
Jyoti Pande Lavakare has personally experienced the human cost of Delhi's air pollution crisis.
In 2017, her mother, Kamala, died from lung cancer which, she said, doctors told her was triggered by air pollution.
Jyoti Pande Lavakare's mother, Kamala, died from lung cancer in 2017. (Supplied)
"She got diagnosed and, in three months, she had passed on and that was a very traumatic time," she said.
Ms Lavakare, a clean-air activist and author, always knew that Delhi suffered from poor air quality, but it was only when she returned from years of living in California that she realised just how bad it was.
"I realised that people who were born and raised in India didn't really know what real blue skies looked like and what real clean air smelled and felt like," she said.
Worried about the impact on her young children, Ms Lavakare, a former journalist, threw herself into researching the health consequences of living in a polluted city.
Concerned by what she learned, she founded a not-for-profit called Care for Air to raise awareness of the health impacts of Delhi's dismal air, activism that became more personal after her mother's death.
"Although I knew myself about air pollution, it was all intellectualised in my head," she said.
"But to see her struggle to breathe and to die in that horrific way was something I felt in my heart."
Farmers in India traditionally burn their fields to improve soil fertility.
(Reuters: Danish Siddiqui)
Why is Delhi's air quality so bad?
There are multiple contributing factors.
Siddharth Singh, an air pollution researcher and the author of The Great Smog of India, noted that while air pollution is a common problem in cities around the world, the kind of pollution seen in Delhi is "unique to India".
Delhi's air quality worsens when farmers in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana burn their fields in the winter months after the harvest to prepare for the next agricultural cycle.
Siddharth Singh says there are several factors that contribute to India's "unique" air pollution. (Supplied)
Mr Singh explained that changing wind directions and slower wind speeds in winter mean that smoke gets trapped instead of being blown towards the sea.
Another factor was pollution emitted from road vehicles and a dependence on coal to generate electricity — India relies heavily on coal because it's readily available and cheap, Mr Singh said.
Northern India also has thousands of small-scale brick manufacturing businesses — which use fire, coal and simple chimneys — that release emissions and dust into the atmosphere and are a "major contributor to the problem", Mr Singh added.
On top of this, the burning of garbage and biomass such as leaves combine to create a "cocktail of air pollutants", Mr Singh said. Toxic air means no one is a 'true non-smoker' in Delhi
India's government is changing the way it manages pollution by moving to an "airshed" approach.(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
Breathing in the toxic air of New Delhi has dire consequences for the city's inhabitants.
It can lead to lower life expectancy and an increased chance of lung cancer, among other illnesses, according to professor and medical doctor Arvind Kumar.
As a chest surgeon at Medanta Hospital in Gurugram — a satellite city of Delhi — and founding trustee of the Lung Care Foundation, Dr Kumar has noticed a significant change in the profile of his patients over the past 30 years.
In 1988, 90 per cent of his patients were cigarette smokers and they were mostly men in their 50s and 60s, he said.
But, by 2018, 50 per cent of his lung cancer patients were non-smokers and from a younger demographic: Most were in their 40s, with some in their 30s and a few in their late 20s.
"When I used to operate on patients, I used to see black deposits on the lungs of known smokers. But, when I used to operate on patients for other chest diseases, in non-smokers, it was a rarity to see black lungs," he said.
These days, when he operated on people, finding a normal pink lung was "a rarity", he said.
Dr Arvind Kumar has witnessed a change in the profile of his patients over the past 30 years. (Supplied)
In a city as polluted as Delhi, "there is no true non-smoker", Dr Kumar added.
This is due to the tiny particulate matter known as PM2.5 (with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less), air pollution that is so small it can be inhaled into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
"So, if today the level of PM2.5 is 220 — which is equal to 10 cigarettes — every newborn today will be smoking 10 cigarettes on day one of his or her life," he said.
Over December 2021, Delhi's daily levels of PM2.5 averaged around 205 micrograms per cubic metre, nearly 14 times higher than the threshold prescribed by the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines.
Ms Lavakare was particularly concerned about the impact on Delhi's children, saying the air is so polluted that "every newborn is a smoker from the day they're born".
"You're setting up your young and your youth for failure," she said.
A boom in air purifiers and oxygen bars
People are paying to breathe in fresh oxygen at oxygen bars in Delhi.
(Reuters: Anushree Fadnavis)
One of the offshoots of the air pollution crisis is the rise in products and businesses catering to the need for clean, fresh air.
"Air purifiers are a booming industry today," Dr Kumar said.
Cities like Delhi have also seen a rise in oxygen bars, where customers can pay to breathe in pure oxygen.
At one oxygen bar in Delhi, customers can pay 700–1300 rupees ($13–$24) to breathe in flavoured oxygen for around 15 minutes.
Dr Kumar described these ventures as "opportunistic industries" that are trying to "cash in on this health crisis".
Mr Singh noted that, while wealthier residents have the option of staying indoors or purchasing air purifiers, lower socio-economic groups are more exposed to air pollution.
"The poor tend to work closer to the roads. They tend to work closer to the brick-manufacturing units. They tend to work at construction sites, so their exposure to pollution is obviously much, much higher," he said. Solutions to avoid 'a dystopian future'
In response to the country's air pollution problem, India's central government launched the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) in 2019.
The NCAP targets air pollution in around 132 cities in India and aims to reduce pollution concentrations by 2024.
Mr Singh was not optimistic about NCAP's success because air pollution "is not just an urban problem".
Some experts say "smog towers", which are basically 20-metre-tall air purifiers, are ineffective.
(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
The ABC contacted the Environment Minister in the Delhi government, Gopal Rai, as well as pollution control entities at the state and central government level but did not receive a response.
What was needed, Mr Singh said, was "a shift from an urban approach to an airshed approach".
An airshed, he explained, was a region with "common geographical and meteorological traits that make air pollution in that region very similar".
India's Environment Minister, Bhupender Yadav, recently announced the government would revise its approach to air pollution and would focus on airsheds instead of urban centres.
The Delhi government has also attempted to tackle air pollution in the city by building smog towers, which are designed to purify the air around them.
Both Dr Kumar and Ms Lavakare consider this solution to be ineffectual and a waste of money.
Dr Kumar said air pollution could not be solved by allowing the air to be polluted and then cleaning it.
It was the sources of pollution that needed to be controlled, he stressed.
But there was also the question of political will.
Air pollution was "not a major electoral issue", Mr Singh said, because there were more-pressing developmental challenges such as "poverty, economic growth, jobs, inflation" along with other political and cultural issues.
Jyoti Pande Lavakare became a clean-air activist and is worried about the impact of air pollution on her family. (Supplied)
Air pollution is the second crisis Delhi's residents have lived through in 2021 after the pandemic.
However, Ms Lavakare said that its government was not taking air pollution as seriously as COVID-19 and that it had fallen to civil society groups such as hers to do the government's job in spreading awareness.
"It's really a dystopian future unless the government gets its act together," she said.
AUSTRALIA
WA District's worst fire since 1950s
Poolaijelo farming community on Victoria-SA border counts cost of New Year grassfire
Roads in the West Wimmera will remain closed while fire-affected trees are removed.
(Supplied: CFA)
Farmers in a Victorian border district have begun clearing the damage from a 7,000-hectare fire that wiped out thousands of livestock and destroyed farm infrastructure.
Key points:
The fire began in SA and crossed into Victoria, burning more than 7,330 hectares
Thousands of livestock perished or have been destroyed
The fire also burnt into state forest that's home to the endangered red-tailed black cockatoo
WARNING: This article contains images that may distress some people
On Sunday afternoon, emergency services downgraded the alert level as the threat to private property eased and crews worked on containment lines on the fire's eastern boundary.
Celia Scott, a farmer at Poolaijelo in the West Wimmera, said most properties in the area were affected but to varying degrees.
Those hardest hit, she said, had "lost pretty much every blade of grass on their property".
The grassfire took off in South Australia on New Year's Eve.
(Facebook: Daniel McRostie/CFS)
Most devastating was the loss of livestock, largely sheep, including thousands that had to be destroyed after sustaining injuries in the fire.
"As farmers, we put a lot of care and effort into looking after our stock and it's a horrendous thing that a lot of farmers and families are going through," Ms Scott said.
While no homes were destroyed, there was considerable damage to farm infrastructure.
"There are fence lines where there are no posts left," Ms Scott said.
"There's just some wire and you can't tell there was a fence line there.
"It just burnt so hot and so fast."
Thousands of sheep had to be euthanased after being caught in the fire.(Supplied)
Green Triangle Fire Alliance manager Anthony Walsh said about 800 hectares of plantation timber worth more than $10 million had been lost.
Agriculture Victoria state agency commander Banjo Patterson said officers had been out to manage welfare issues and help farmers, although the extent of the damage was not yet known.
Mr Patterson said once the assessment was completed, the response would move into a recovery phase in which the department could help farmers seeking longer-term assistance to re-establish their properties.
Mobile coverage a challenge
The fire also damaged electricity infrastructure and Powercor crews worked through Sunday to restore power to the 70 properties affected.
Ms Scott said the loss of power had made it difficult to carry out urgent tasks, such as arranging people to euthanase stock, because of the district's poor mobile coverage.
"That kind of stuff really hammers home how isolated we are and we're not out in the middle of nowhere at Poolaijelo," she said.
"We need to do something as a country about telecommunications in rural Australia because we suffer big time when events like this happen."
This shot by a CFA volunteer on New Year's Eve captures the intensity of the flames.(Supplied: Chris Toms)
District's worst fire since 1950s
Country Fire Authority incident controller Mark Gunning said some roads would need to remain closed while crews assessed which fire-affected trees on roadsides needed removal.
The fire burnt into the Meereek State Forest, a known habitat of the endangered south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo. Wildlife officers have been deployed to the area.
The fire into forest home to the south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo.
(Supplied: Michael Waters)
Ms Scott said the fire was the worst in the Poolaijelo and Langkoop areas since the 1950s.
"A couple of years ago we had a fairly active [fire season] with lightning strikes et cetera, but this is by far the worst one in my lifetime.
"Even my father — I won't tell you his age — but he was a young boy the last time a fire this bad came through the district."
